Month: June 2016

We completed our first practice on this past Saturday. 10 of our 12 players were there, including new addition, forward Ian Meyer. Assistant Coach Sam Clubb was not there, as he is returning from a family vacaction, but he texted us, and had his introduction pre-recorded for us. However, former Greyhound Shelomi Miner was at practice, and helped us out.

We first covered the team rule about injuries; all injuries are to be reported, with no exceptions. They are to be reported to ALL COACHES plus the player’s parents. We did some basic stretching, and we then started learning the Motion framework, which serves as the starting point for our man-to-man offense.

As always, some players took better to the motion system than others did. Among the better at the beginning were Lindale Baker, Keylan Horn, Kolin Easterling, Cody Koebel, Lemuel Miner, Connor Parrish. As always, the problems that seemed to occur were the typical ones: outside players not cutting immediately after passing, big men getting confused as to which direction they go on the inner rotation, or worse yet, not moving.

Afterwards, we did our player introductions. Kolin kicked it off, and as we went around, bits and pieces started to get funny. We were doing a better job of joking around and having fun during the intros that we’ve ever done.

We did some motion work against real defense, and before we knew it, it was time for free throws and suicides. Only one player – Connor Parrish – made his free-throw goal, winning the first week for the skill players.

Of course, I turned 50 this past week, and by Greyhound tradition, each player and coach got to take me one-on-one, to make sure I haven’t lost a step and can still play. Well, the players this year fared better than they have in the past; Keylan Horn absolutely burned me.

We finished up with some scrimmage. As a whole, I felt we had forgotten too much of our positioning and flow of motion at the scrimmage. I have to give props to two people who were talking with each other and trying to keep the principles in place going: Lindale Baker and Kolin Easterling. They kept it together, and started getting offense late with feeds to Cody Koebel. While Connor Parrish and Keylan Horn were trying to pull the team together, it tended to break down a bit more. However, Keylan’s pushing the ball and Connor’s shooting kept their team in the game.